Super Bowl Broadcast Momentarily Shows Porn

Some Comcast customers in Tucson, Arizona, who were watching the Super Bowl last night, received a very unexpected program interruption during the last few minutes of the game. Just moments after Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald scored a touchdown that momentarily gave the Cardinals a 23-20 lead with 2:37 left on the clock, the broadcast suddenly switched from the Super Bowl to a scene from a pornographic movie--including full-frontal, male nudity--for about 30 seconds, before the broadcast returned back to the Super Bowl.

This unexpected interruption was limited to the HD broadcast from the local NBC affiliate, KVOA-TV--and to only those who were watching via their Comcast cable connections. The over-the-air broadcast was not impacted; and neither was the SD version of the broadcast. Customers of other cable or satellite providers "received the clean feed." However, enough viewers saw the pornographic material that KVOA-TV reports that "it sparked a flurry of angry phone calls and e-mails to our newsroom."

Credit: comcastsuperbowlporn.com

KVOA-TV sends its feed over a fiber-optic line to Cox Cable, from which Cox then relays the feed via fiber to Comcast. The Cox broadcast of the Super Bowl did not include the 30-second clip of pornographic material, so the source of the material had to have come at some point after Cox received the feed from KVOA-TV. Comcast Corporate Affairs Manager, Kelle Maslyn, issued the following statement:

"We are mortified by last evening's Super Bowl interruption and we apologize to our customers. Our initial investigation suggests this was an isolated malicious act. We are conducting a thorough investigation to determine how this happened."

If this was a malicious act, the investigation will look to find if the perpetrator was a Cox or Comcast employee. Cox has stated that it will fully support the Comcast investigation.

For those curious to know what this actual broadcast interruption looked like, it can be seen here (WARNING: NSFW!). Apparently, someone who captured the broadcast interruption on his DVR, videotaped the DVR playback with his camcorder, digitized it to his computer, and then uploaded it online to a newly-registered a domain, titled "comcastsuperbowlporn.com." The owner of the domain states: "The bandwidth has gone through the roof, I can't believe how many hits the site has received. In order to subsidize the hosting costs I may sell some ad space." He is also trying to auction off the domain name.